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Hailed by critics and readers alike as Günter Grass's best book since The Tin Drum, Crabwalk is an engrossing account of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff and a critical meditation on Germany's struggle with its wartime memories.
The Gustloff, a German cruise ship turned refugee carrier, was attacked by a Soviet submarine in January 1945. Some nine thousand people went down in the Baltic Sea, making it the deadliest maritime disaster of all time. Born to an unwed mother on a lifeboat the night of the attack, Paul Pokriefke is a middle-aged journalist trying to piece together the tragic events. For his teenage son, who dabbles in the dark, far-right corners of the Internet, the Gustloff embodies the denial of Germany's suffering. Crabwalk is at once a captivating tale of a tragedy at sea and a fearless examination of the ways different generations of Germans now view their past.
- Sales Rank: #548051 in Books
- Published on: 2004-04-05
- Released on: 2004-04-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .63" w x 5.25" l, .65 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 252 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9780156029704
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
From Publishers Weekly
In a novel that has already attracted attention on both sides of the Atlantic, Nobelist Grass (Too Far Afield) employs a compelling vehicle for his latest excursion into Germany's tortured past. The Wilhelm Gustloff was a Nazi cruise ship refitted to rescue German refugees from the approaching Russian army in the waning days of WWII. The vessel was torpedoed by a Russian sub in the Baltic Sea, resulting in the deaths of 9,000 people and becoming the largest maritime disaster of the 20th century. Grass's unlikely narrator is second-rate journalist Paul Pokriefke, whose mother gave birth to him while the ship was collapsing. Pokriefke's irreverent narrative, couched in colloquial language, moves back and forth through the history of the incident, starting with the story of Gustloff, a Nazi functionary who was shot in 1936 by a Jewish medical student named David Frankfurter. Grass also weaves in details about the Russian sub commander, Aleksandr Marinesko, but the decidedly modern touch is the inclusion of Pokriefke's son, Konrad, an unbalanced loner who becomes deeply involved with the Web site dedicated to commemorating Gustloff's "martyrdom" and the vessel Hitler named after him. Though the elliptical narration and multiple subplots intentionally impede dramatic momentum, this is one of Grass's most accessible novels, and the closing chapters about the rescue of Pokriefke's mother are simply riveting. The final irony is the fate of Konrad, who, in search of revenge, goes after a man posing as Frankenfurter on the Web site. Grass has covered many of these issues in earlier novels, but this time he addresses the suffering of German civilians during and after the conflict. A writer who refuses to avert his eyes from unpleasant truths, he remains an eloquent explorer of his country's troubled 20th-century history.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In 1945, a Soviet submarine sunk the German refugee ship Wilhelm Gustoff, resulting in 9000 deaths-the worst maritime disaster ever. Grass here reimagines not just the event but the consequences for postwar Germany.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The latest novel by this Nobel laureate is a stunning work of historical fiction, centering on the worst maritime disaster in history, the sinking of Wilhelm Gustloff on January 30, 1945, by a Soviet submarine. Packed with more than 10,000 people, mostly refugees, only 1,238 survived the sinking. Grass' narrator, a journalist named Paul Pokriefke, is a survivor of that disaster--of sorts. His mother was on board and nine months pregnant on that fateful day, and Paul was born soon after she was rescued. Because of his connection with the disaster, Pokriefke is hired to write its history. While researching on the Internet, Pokriefke discovers that his estranged teenage son is also interested in the disaster, spurred on by his grandmother, whose postwar life was spent in East Germany, and by the rising skinhead movement. It is here that fate overtakes the Pokriefke family. The ship's history and that of the Pokriefkes is too strongly intertwined, and one tragedy leads to the next. Frank Caso
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
65 of 71 people found the following review helpful.
Echoes and Ripples -- Reliving and Reimagining the Past
By Donald Mitchell
Crabwalk is the first great book I have read that was written in the 21st century.
Why Crabwalk? Here's a definition of "crab:" "to move sideways, diagonally, or obliquely, especially with short, abrupt bursts of speed." Crabwalk's structure is similar. Grass offers a clue in referring to "scuttling backward to move forward."
Paul Pokreife, a journeyman journalist, narrates several parallel tracks: his life, his mother's (Tulla), his son's (Konrad), his ex-wife's, the ship Wilhelm Gustloff, the Nazi Wilhelm Gustloff (and his monument and remains), Gustloff's assassin (David Frankfurter), the Soviet submarine commander who sunk the ship (Marinesko), and Konrad's online challenger (Wolfgang "David" Stremplin) and his parents. Sometimes Mr. Grass jumps sideways sharing several stories at that time. Other times he jumps forward or backward to a different time or story. . . and then goes sideways to other stories. It's like stream of consciousness narration except it's finished prose and dialogue. . . rather than thought fragments.
This structure establishes many connections between one person and another to show an interconnected fabric of German society and consciousness since 1933 in the context of a few events, a family and a few other characters. I felt like I had just absorbed the richness of War and Peace . . . except in a relatively short and simple book.
Crabwalk can be read at several levels of meaning. The most compelling story relates the terrible tragedy of the sinking of the German refugee ship, Wilhelm Gustoloff, in January 1945 on the frigid Baltic by a Soviet submarine. More than 1200 survived while most others (estimated between 6,600 and 10,600) died from explosions, equipment faults, rescue mistakes, freezing, drowning, or the icy waters. Of these, more than 4,000 were probably children. There were only 22 lifeboats on board, and only one was launched properly. You'll have to read Crabwalk to appreciate the tragedy, but it dwarfs the Titanic. Yet it's a little-known event. The Germans made no announcement then to help maintain civilian morale. The Soviets were embarrassed and hid the event. Post-war Germany has kept a code of silence around any German civilians suffering as a result of the war, seeming to reflect the national guilt for starting the war.
Paul's being born the night of the sinking, aboard a rescue ship, links him to the Nazi past (through the anniversaries of the Nazi rise to power and Gustloff's death), the consequences of the sinking on the survivors, and the sinking's effect on the next generation of Germans. This connection is the bridge to other ways to read the book.
At another level, it's a story of a dysfunctional family: A woman who wasn't sure who the father is of her only son; a son estranged from his mother by her disappointment in him and his rejection of her values; a fatherless son becoming a poor father and failed husband; and a grandson reaching out to a grandmother for the emotional support his father fails to give him.
At a third level, Crabwalk is about the experience of the German nation since January 1933 when the Nazis took over. We go through the economic recovery years as Tulla's parents take a cruise to the Norwegian fjords aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff. Tulla grows up during the war and has a miscarriage while being a streetcar conductor. She becomes pregnant with Paul, and after the rescue are settled in East Germany where she becomes a carpenter and a devoted Stalinist. Paul escapes to the West as a teenager, and the two becomes estranged. Tulla also admires the old Nazis after East Germany falls and tries to fascinate her grandson with the ship's history. She succeeds through giving him a computer, and Konrad runs a Web site about the ship and the man it's named for. At the same time, you find out how Gustloff becomes a Nazi martyr after he's assassinated by a Jewish medical student in Davos. Ironically, Frankfurter's health improves by being in prison. He's released after World War II by the Swiss and heads to Palestine.
At a fourth level, this is a story about how our lives are influenced by our environment (our family, our nation, our history and our ways of perceiving).
At a fifth level, Crabwalk teaches us to think about the consequences of when and where we're born. If Paul had been born a few hours later, he would have spent his whole life in the western sectors of Germany rather than starting in the east. He believes his whole life would have been different . . . and it probably would have.
At a sixth level, Crabwalk explains that history repeats itself through the influences of the earlier generations on another. There are many deliberate ironies in the book as one character acts out variations on what an earlier character did (especially the way Konrad mimics David Frankfurter).
Ultimately, the book is about guilt. Who's guilt is it? And for what? What's to be done to atone? "History, or, to be more precise, the history we Germans have repeatedly mucked up, is a clogged toilet." "We flush and flush, but the [content]. . . keeps rising." In particular, should Germans deny their own suffering in World War II as a means to expiate guilt, or will that denial lead to new guilty actions?
The book profoundly expanded my understanding of the German experience. As a young man in Munich on business, I found my sleep troubled and interrupted by dreams and memories of Nazi marchers on the street outside, death camps in the countryside and murderous attacks on fellow Germans. Some taxi drivers who were old enough to have been in the Wehrmacht looked at me with obvious hate. Clients my age were very punctiliously correct anti-Nazis (we even visited events criticizing the Nazi past together). On the streets, young skinheads passed wearing swastikas. Crabwalk helped me to understand what was happening then and now.
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
A brilliant book on a little known tragedy
By Linda Oskam
This book describes the history of a ship and its influence on the history of a family. The ship is the Wilhelm Gustloff that was named after a Nazi who was killed in Davos, Switzerland in 1936. After its use as a cruise ship for the Nazi Kraft durch Freude movement, a floating hospital and a training ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff was torpedoed to the bottom of the sea on 30 January 1945 with on board between 6000 and 10000 (nobody knows the exact number) German refugees. On board is also the very pregnant Tulla Prokriefke, who goes into labour when the ship goes down. In the end her son Paul is born on board of a rescue boat.
Paul is divorced, mediocre journalist, who has, to say it mildly, a difficult relationship with his mother. One day he finds a site on the Internet that describes the ship that determined his life (his mother cannot talk about anything else). He finds that the site, with neonazi characteristics, is made by his son Konnie. And then the story goes almost inevitably to its dramatic conclusion.
The book is called Crabwalk because the story of the ship and the family are not told in chronological order, but by walking sideways. Still, the story goes forward, just like a crab walks. This is also because Paul tells the story of the Wilhelm Gustloff working with the information that he finds on the internetsite of his son.
This is a brilliantly written book, because one never gets lost between or within story lines despite the large number of considerable time leaps. Also, this book describes a little known ship tragedy (more than 5 times the numbers of death as the Titanic!) and gives an insight into the distorted minds of German neonazi's. An excellent read.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Missing notes in the scale�
By Friederike Knabe
The events surrounding the biggest naval disaster in history and its tragic outcome are not an easy topic to bring to the attention of the reader of fifty-some years later. "Why only now?" is a good question and one that starts CRABWALK. The Wilhelm Gustloff, a "Strength through Joy" cruise ship turned refugee carrier, sank after a Soviet submarine attack on January 30 1945 leading to the death of more than 9,000 people, half of them children and infants. Although the details of the sinking have been known since then, there has been reluctance to publicize them. Grass has found a way to break the silence. At least one aspect of his motivation for doing so revolves around the disaster's aftermath in today's society and emerges clearly towards the end of the book.
Tulla Pokriefke, one of the survivors of the tragedy, cannot find words to describe what she saw on the ship as the torpedoes hit: "There's no notes in the scale for it..." Nevertheless, for years she has been insisting that her son write it all down - the way she remembers it. Paul Pokriefke, a second-rate middle-aged journalist, born on one of the rescue ships at the time of the sinking, reluctantly takes on the "job". He's pressured into it by the major background player, Grass himself. Paul timidly argues with Him about the format, scope and depth of his book. He is in favour of a neutral documentary on the ship, its history and its namesake, a Nazi "martyr" and hero. His disinclination to take on this project at all speaks volumes about his generation's reluctance to relive and confront all aspects of the German past. Paul is typical in other ways too... But He nags and guides Paul through the details: take the central theme of the sinking of the ship and trace its history; bring out the lives of the people directly connected with it; don't forget Tulla, yourself and your son - make it personal. The outcome is a description of historical characters like Wilhelm Gustloff, the Nazi activist, David Frankfurter, the German Jew who killed him in 1936, and Alexandr Marinesko, the submarine captain who sank the vessel, interwoven with Paul's and his family's life, from then to now. Three generations of Pokriefkes, deeply influenced by the disaster, have to deal with it and the wider Nazi history in their individual way. None of them is comfortable with their present-day life.
It takes a specially gifted writer and authoritative critic like Gunter Grass to make this tragedy public in a format that is meaningful today. Having referred to the sinking of the Gustloff in previous novels, "it seems that He knew Tulla when she was young", he had been reluctant to expand on it until he had identified the right fictional frame in which to embed the facts. He found it in the strong character of Tulla, 18 at the time of the disaster and turning completely white on that day, who epitomizes the successful survivor and practical realist of her generation. She remains in the East, seemingly switching allegiances without effort to the Stalinist regime, defending it long after the Wall has crumbled.
Gunter Grass' language and literary skills are undeniable; but his often difficult language (at least in German) and his complex imagery and use of metaphor have brought him admirers as well as critics. In CRABWALK, both the language and the imagery do not present any difficulty for the reader. In fact, the text flows relatively smoothly: it reads fast despite the subject matter. Walking sideways like a crab and "scuttling backwards" to move forward describes the flow of the story. Slowly the characters come into view and the different strands merge to form a comprehensive picture. Paul's more or less ongoing commentary about his writing efforts, his reactions to family and Him, his jumping back and forth in the story, results, at times, in a somewhat lighter, more conversational tone.
Grass deliberately uses the structure of a traditional `novella' (not specified in the English version) to convey the historical events and their impact on his group of Germans. An addition to being a `short novel', a novella is usually more tightly structured and focused on a single major event. It often comprises a didactic angle or moral message. All of these elements can be found in CRABWALK. Grass' message in particular addresses the after-war generation(s). He integrates into the story the recurrent problem of young neo-nazis, skinheads and the danger of hate websites on the Internet characterized through Paul's son Konny. He reflects on the inability of the parent generation to come to terms with the children as well as their own reality. He criticizes the lukewarm attitudes towards politics and history by many Germans of Paul's generation. He is concerned with what the future holds. The German word `Krebs' - CRAB also means cancer. Although not stated directly the reader of German cannot avoid reflecting on this connotation. Like cancers, totalitarian and fascist systems infect society, then go into remission, come and go. Can we be wholly cured of them? CRABWALK is on many levels an important book, which leaves you with ample food for thought. [Friederike Knabe, Ottawa, Canada]
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